President Richard M Nixon Essay Research Paper

President Richard M. Nixon Essay, Research Paper Watergate, designation of a major U.S. political scandal that began with the burglary and wiretapping of the Democratic party’s campaign headquarters, later engulfed

President Richard M. Nixon Essay, Research Paper

Watergate, designation of a major U.S. political scandal that began with the burglary

and wiretapping of the Democratic party’s campaign headquarters, later engulfed

President Richard M. Nixon and many of his supporters in a variety of illegal acts, and

culminated in the first resignation of a U.S. president.

The burglary was committed on June 17, 1972, by five men who were caught in the

offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate apartment and office

complex in Washington, D.C. Their arrest eventually uncovered a White

House-sponsored plan of espionage against political opponents and a trail of complicity

that led to many of the highest officials in the land, including former U.S. Attorney

General John Mitchell, White House Counsel John Dean, White House Chief of Staff H.

R. Haldeman, White House Special Assistant on Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman, and

President Nixon himself.

On April 30, 1973, nearly a year after the burglary and arrest and following a grand jury

investigation of the burglary, Nixon accepted the resignation of Haldeman and

Ehrlichman and announced the dismissal of Dean. U.S. Attorney General Richard

Kleindienst resigned as well. The new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, appointed a

special prosecutor, Harvard Law School professor Archibald Cox, to conduct a full-scale

investigation of the Watergate break-in.

In May 1973 the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Activities opened hearings,

with Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina as chairman. A series of startling revelations

followed. Dean testified that Mitchell had ordered the break-in and that a major attempt

was under way to hide White House involvement. He claimed that the president had

authorized payments to the burglars to keep them quiet. The Nixon administration

vehemently denied this assertion.

The White House Tapes

The testimony of White House aide Alexander Butterfield unlocked the entire

investigation. On July 16, 1973, Butterfield told the committee, on nationwide

television, that Nixon had ordered a taping system installed in the White House to

automatically record all conversations; what the president said and when he said it